Facebook Battles Revenge Porn With New Tools To Prevent Spreading: Here's How It Works

Facebook has new tools in place to fight the nasty phenomenon known as “revenge porn,” aiming to stop such photos from spreading.

Revenge porn refers to sharing sensitive photos of people in intimate settings without having their consent to make those photos public. In today’s mobile era, it’s extremely easy to document everything and just snap a photo of various settings and people with a simple tap of a button on a smartphone.

When the photos depict people in intimate circumstances and are shared without their approval or consent, things get serious and revenge porn is considered an offense. It can be greatly detrimental to the victims and cause serious harm, which is why revenge porn is illegal in 35 U.S. states, as well as Germany, the UK, and Israel.

Facebook Fighting Revenge Porn: How It Works

It’s not easy to stop content from being posted and shared online, but Facebook is up to the challenge and it announced new tools to help combat the spreading of revenge porn.

Thanks to new photo-matching technology, Facebook is preventing users from re-sharing images that were already reported or flagged as revenge porn. With the new tools in place, when a user tries to share a sensitive photo that was previously taken down, Facebook will display a pop-up notifying the user that the photo in question violates Facebook’s policies and can’t be shared.

Moreover, the restriction doesn’t apply only to sharing such photos on Facebook’s main site. Users will not be able to share revenge porn photos on Facebook Messenger or Instagram either.

Revenge Porn Statistics

Facebook points out that according to a study of U.S. victims of revenge porn, 93 percent of them suffered significant emotional distress, while 82 percent suffered notable impairment in occupational, social, or other major areas of their life. In addition to coming up with new tools to counter revenge porn, Facebook says it’s also teaming up with safety organizations to provide support and resources to victims.

“These tools, developed in partnership with safety experts, are one example of the potential technology has to help keep people safe,” Facebook explains. “Facebook is in a unique position to prevent harm, one of our five areas of focus as we help build a global community.”

Revenge porn is an increasingly widespread problem on the internet and special measures to combat this nasty trend are paramount. According to a report [PDF] published last year by the Data & Society Research Institute and the Center for Innovative Public Health Research, one in 25 people in the United States falls victim to non-consensual photo sharing.

Revenge porn is a serious matter and while laws play a major role in curbing such attacks, it’s also equally important to prevent them altogether. Blocking the distribution of such harmful materials also plays a great part in combating revenge porn, and technology companies have been making notable efforts in this regard.

Google, Microsoft, Twitter, Medium, and others have their own policies and processes to handle revenge porn, and Facebook’s latest tools further prove that the matter shall not be taken lightly.